if I want to view with format “###,###,###.###”
and i have value 100,000,000.010
and will display 100,000,000.01

This should work:

<?php
// Will print $2.50
$number = 2.5;
$formatted = number_format($number,2);
?>


What would I do to force the currency to show the amount as $2.50?

Try the code below. I commented areas to indicate what each code block is doing.


<?php
/*
This assumes that the column(field) you are selecting is called column, and the table is called your_table.
*/
$total = 0; // Declare total variable
$sql="SELECT column FROM your_table"; // SQL statement to run
$result=mysql_query($sql); // Query database

// Loops through query result and adds each value to $total
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$total = $total + $row[column];
}
echo $total; // Prints total to screen
?>


I query a DB where currency is stored as a varchar(10) and I want to add up the total in my php script. What do I do then?

Since you’re using the dot concatenation operator, you might as well eliminate the need to scan through the double-quoted string, like so –

echo ‘$’ . $formatted;

If you use single quotes, PHP won’t attempt to parse the string. It will simply take it as it is. This is only a tiny bit more efficient of course, but little things do tend to add up. Besides, why be inefficient when you can be efficient? :)

Say I return 1347870 from a database query and wish to print it as: 134.78.70 ?

Chad R. Smith
Director of Web Development
http://www.50marketing.com